oh desert ocean, hold me in your arms
by arabellagaleotti
Summary: What happened out there, in the desert?


He's been walking for days. Or what feels like it. He kinda lost count. Unusual, for him, there's usually a calculator in his head that works out every possible problem . It gets tiring, he's not gonna lie.

He ditched the armour a long time ago. Now he's just walking, walking walking.

If he closes his eyes he feels like maybe he could just be at home in a heatwave. Sure, a heatwave on steroids, but he can imagine Pepper with her hair coming out of her ponytail and curling around her face, suit jacket ditched, one more button than usual open at her collar . The images she hands him a drink. They're out by the pool, he's sitting on a longer and fiddling with a hologram. He imagines her laugh at his jokes, he imagines watching her walk back inside. He imagines the hazy-soft layer of romance between them.

Most of all, he imagines actually doing something about it.

He thinks of his mother, sometimes, while looking at her. But no. they're both beautiful and smart, yes. But his mother was weak. She was. There's no way around it. She let his father leave and she let herself drift away.

Peeper is anything but weak. She's strong. She stands up for herself and probably has brass knuckles in her purse. Pepper would never vacation like his mother did, weeks and weeks of just laying by the pool or the beach. Pepper never vacations at all.

He can't see anything but this sand, it goes on as far as his eye can see. They kinda look like waves, rolling towards him on an endless ocean.

A gust of wind buffets him. He squeezes his eyes closed to protect from the sand. You'd think the wind would be cooler here. Nope. it's like a hairdryer being pointed at your face.

He catches a mouth of sand and bends over to cough. It makes his ribs grate against the metal in his chest.

Ow.

With every step the metal canister jolts inside his chest, like a second heart, only this one is metal and glowing and hurts . It's a slow torture, but effective. He half wants to rip it out of his chest and be done with it.

He closes his eyes, a few long seconds later, opens them. The desert is still there, only now he can imagine being a child again, playing on the shore-line. He went on holiday with his mother a few times. She was Italian, so how many hours he spent on the beach in Italy, he cannot say, but surely not more than he spent in France, or Greece, or Croatia .

Those oceans were better than this one, those oceans were sticky with ice-cream, the waves feel like his mother's silk kimono, like her watching him over the rim of her glass . Tony's probably going to die in this ocean. But he wants to die in the ocean of his childhood. He wants to drown in his mother's arms and the waters off Italy, he wants to take one final breath of her perfume and sink under the water .

He doesn't want to die here . He doesn't want to die just after surviving even past all odds. Just after open-heart surgery inside a cave. He doesn't want to die before he figures out who the fuck is giving his guns to the Ten Rings.

He doesn't want to die. God, it's the first time he can honestly say that in a while.

As soon as he thinks that, two black military helicopters rise above the waves, rotors spinning, military men staring out the cockpit and the open sides . They look surprised to see him, awe-shocked, actually. He supposes it's been three months.

He collapses to his knees, stares at it for a moment, then he breaks his spell and shouts though his jagged throat. He doesn't even know what he's saying. He doesn't even care at this point. He holds up peace signs and stares into the sky, as blue as the ocean.

The ocean waves slip away from his body, leach out like the tide is drawing away. His oases, Pepper and Mama, they leave. Pepper closes the door behind her and Mama puts down her glass.

Rhodey is barrelling towards him like a bullet, and then he's hugging him tighter than ever before. It jostles the heart in his chest - both of them - and makes him sigh out a gasp of pain, but he doesn't say anything, just hugs him back .

Three months. 91 days. 2,184 hours. 7,7040 minutes. 46,224,00 seconds. He hasn't seen Rhodey in that long. He hasn't seen anyone apart from Yinsen and a few scattered terrorists.

"Next time, you ride with me," Rhodey tells him, and Tony thinks his mother would be laughing right now. He thinks Pepper would be crying right now. He thinks he should be doing those things too but he just exhales shakily and squeezes his eyes shut and hopes this isn't another dream .


End file.
